Friday, August 8, 2014

Movie Review: Guardians of the Galaxy

It’s
easy to be a fan of the Space Opera genre. After being exposed through
childhood and adulthood with the likes of Star
Wars and Star Trek one begins to
wonder when the next Space Opera Adventure movie would arrive. One that isn't
toned down for the kids or dumbed down for an easy cash grab.

With
the arrival of James Gunn’s terrific Guardians
of the Galaxy, Space Opera fans have a gigantic reason to cheer. Not only
is Guardians one of the year's most
exciting and entertaining movies, but is indeed the Star Wars for this generation.

Director
Gunn must be one hell of a Marvel fan and comic book geek. He has followed up
the half a dozen Avengers universe
films and delivered a relatively unknown property with such gloriously fantastic
style. A typical hack job by, say, Michael Bay, is a hollow two-hour light show
pretending to be a summer blockbuster. Guardians
of the Galaxy is considerably more than that.

Gunn’s
film is candy for hardcore Marvel fanboys, while still managing to keep the newcomers
glued to their seats. There are dozens of action sequences, all of which are
kinetic and thrilling. A new creature or beautiful otherworldly space landscape
is offered every five minutes, and each one is more impressive than the
previous one. When the film isn't bowling you over with its awesome visuals, it
serves a barrage of laughs via its extremely fun characters. Gunn had
deconstructed the superhero genre in his dark comedy Super and he takes it a notch further in this film. In this day of
CGI tech and glut of superhero films it's not enough to simply destroy a city
at the end of the movie as a grand finale. Gunn seems fully aware of this and
he treats characters more importantly than the numerous big money shots. The
combination of sincere emotion, huge spectacle and a real sense of wonder and
adventure is what makes Guardians so
much more than a superhero movie.

We
have Star Lord - a goofy but heroic human sucked into an intergalactic war; Gamora
– an alien orphan assassin; Drax – a hulking badass who laughs manically;
Rocket Racoon – a mean snarky raccoon with a love for firing rockets at people
who piss him off; and Groot – a lovable tree like humanoid who can kick some
copious amounts of ass with his branch-limbs. They’re all bizarre, completely
mismatched characters, and the film milks their mismatched-ness to hilarious
levels. They bicker, they fight, they punch each other in the face, but
ultimately they realize that they need to stick together if they want to save
their respective worlds.

The
big ‘assemble’ in The Avengers was
one epic scene. But in Guardians the
assembly is fleshed out over the course of the movie, the conflicts between the
characters timed and woven around to perfection. That gives you a chance to
dive into the characters, to understand them and ultimately fall in love with
them. And yet, there’s the other bonus effect of the film – The Avengers took four previous origin
films to culminate into one giant spectacle, and the effect was glorious. In Guardians the starting point is on the
scale of The Avengers, so good luck dousing
your goosebumps.

It
helps that the folks playing the heroes are so cool. Chris Pratt welds together
the heroic suaveness of Indiana Jones and the goofiness of Andy Dwyer. Bradley
Cooper spits sarcasm in his Rocket Raccoon – he’s pretty much the meanest
superhero we’ve seen. Gamora and Drax are ruthless in their own ways. It’s so
great to see these people trample over the perceived notion of superheroes
having to be broody and kind hearted and overtly nice to everyone. They might
be the Guardians of the Galaxy, but these guys don’t give a shit if they don’t
want to. And it’s great that Marvel chose to be brave about this and offer
heroes who, to quote Peter Serafinowicz in the film, are a bunch of a-holes.

The
villains are equally cool - Ronan (played by Lee Pace) is pretty scary to look
at, Nebula (Karen Gilan) is pure evil, and Thanos (voiced by Josh Brolin) also
makes an appearance. The minor characters like John Reily as a corspman,
Michael Rooker as a bandit and Benocio Del Toro as The Collector are all fun as
well, and they’ll no doubt have bigger roles to play in the sequels.

With
this huge array of characters and landscapes the universe created in Guardians
is vast. Marvel continues to close the gap between the Avengers and the
Guardians, and it’s insane to think of what we’ll get in the future. It’s not
often that we get adrenaline, heart and humor rolled into one cohesive, iconic
epic. And once the film is over, you’ll know the fun has really just begun.